Abstract
The present paper explores anew the question of Husserl’s metaphysics by contrasting H. Philipse and D. Zahavi’s respective position on the matter. I argue that these positions fall victim to opposing exegetical pitfalls. On the one hand, while I concur with Philipse’s general characterisation of Husserl as an ontological phenomenalist, I disagree that this implies Husserl was a subjective idealist similar to Berkeley. On the other hand, while Zahavi’s correlationist interpretation of Husserl avoids this subjective idealist interpretation, I argue that it inadvertently succumbs to the realist alternative that construes the world as existing independently from subjectivity. The way out of this dilemma is to interpret Husserl as an experiential monist, where the phenomenal stream (Erlebnisstrom) is taken to be ontologically primary, by virtue of its antecedence over the subject-object or mind-world dichotomy.
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Notes
It is impossible to do full justice to all the possible lines of interpretation of Husserl’s metaphysical commitments within the scope of a single article. For simplicity and analytical detail, I focus on Philipse and Zahavi’s positions since both authors at least agree that metaphysical neutrality (see e.g., Carr, 1999, Crowell, 2001, and recently Yoshimi 2015, although the latter does not ascribe this position to Husserl himself, but claims it is compatible with his phenomenology) and metaphysical realism (see e.g., Ameriks 1977, Willard, 2002, and Hopp, 2020) should be rejected, at least when it comes to Husserl’s mature philosophy, yet they sufficiently diverge so as not to render a comparison of their views trivial. Although I cannot consider in detail these other alternatives and their variants here, it should be obvious from what follows why I agree with Philipse and Zahavi in rejecting the neutral and realist lines of interpretation.
Author’s translation. All French quotes in the present article are translated by the author, unless otherwise specified.
References to Husserl are to the English translations, when available. I give the page numbers to the corresponding Husserliana edition in brackets.
Such as that of “production” (Leistung) and “meaning-bestowal” (Sinngebung).
A similar interpretation has also been defended by Evan Thompson in Mind in Life (2007, see esp. 22 − 7, 82 − 7 and 239 − 40). Zahavi approves of Thompson’s reading of Husserl (see 2017, § 5.4), which amounts to claiming that the “transcendental status of consciousness” means “that consciousness is always already presupposed as an invariant condition of possibility for the disclosure of any object” (Thompson, 2007, 86).
It should be observed in passing that Levinas had already described this aspect of Husserl’s thought as the essential “perceptibility” of material things: “In sum, the existence of the unperceived material thing can only reside in its perceptibility. This perceptibility is not an empty possibility in the sense that anything that is exempt of contradiction is possible, but a possibility positively inherent to the very essence of consciousness. The existence of physical reality in its entirety, which forms the background to what we presently perceive, signifies a positive possibility to see subjective phenomena of a certain type appear – an appearing which can furthermore be anticipated to a certain extent by what we presently perceive” (1994, 44 − 5). Here Levinas comments on § 45 of Ideas I.
It should be noted from the outset that my purpose here is to focus on the metaphysical conclusions of this thought experiment, not so much on its validity or overall logic, nor on the procedure and significance of the epoché itself—topics I have dealt with at length elsewhere (Blouin, 2021). Also, recent commentators (e.g., Bower, 2015 and Jacobs, 2018) have argued that the world that is annihilated in this thought experiment is the spatiotemporal and causal world of stable objects, the world that is studied in physics, thus leaving open the possibility that a more primitive world of experience remains untouched by the annihilation—indeed is uncovered by it (see Taguchi, 2017). I am entirely sympathetic with such lines of interpretation, and in general agree that the spirit of § 49 is not to show that an entirely worldless subjectivity is possible, but rather that there is a “world of lived experience” that is more primitive than the “universe of physics”, and that the latter, as Merleau-Ponty (1945, iii) memorably put it, is but the “secondary expression” of the former. The point of the epoché is to annihilate the world as we conceive it in order to “reawaken (réveiller)” the world as it is immediately experienced. Thus, in what follows, the thesis that the being of nature is dependent on the being of consciousness could be restated as the thesis that the world of science is dependent on the world of experience. But this does not change the fact that Husserl argues for a relationship of ontological, not merely epistemological, dependence, which is what I will be emphasizing here.
See Husserl, 1960, 86 [119]: “phenomenology is eo ipso ‘transcendental idealism’, though in a fundamentally and essentially new sense. [It is not] a Kantian idealism, which believes it can keep open, at least as a limiting concept, the possibility of a world of things in themselves.”
See also Husserl, 1960, 84 [117]: “Every imaginable sense, every imaginable being, whether the latter is called immanent or transcendent, falls within the domain of transcendental subjectivity, as the subjectivity that constitutes sense and being. The attempt to conceive the universe of true being as something lying outside the universe of possible consciousness, […] the two being related to one another merely externally by a rigid law, is nonsensical. They belong together essentially; and, as belonging together essentially, they are also concretely one, one in the only absolute concretion: transcendental subjectivity. If transcendental subjectivity is the universe of possible sense, then an outside is precisely – nonsense.”
See preceding footnote; see also Husserl, 2014, 82 [85] and 102 [106].
See Husserl, 1960, 42 [80]: “The existence of a world and, accordingly, the existence of this die are ‘parenthesized’ in consequence of my epoché; but the one identical, appearing die (as appearing) is continuously ‘immanent’ in the flowing consciousness, descriptively ‘in’ it; as is likewise the attribute ‘one identical.’ This being-in-consciousness is a being-in of a completely unique kind: not a being-in-consciousness as a really intrinsic component part, but rather a being-in-it ‘ideally’ as something intentional, something appearing – or, equivalently stated, a being-in-it as its immanent ‘objective sense’. The ‘object’ of consciousness, the object as having identity ‘with itself’ during the flowing subjective process, does not come into the process from outside; on the contrary, it is included as a sense in the subjective process itself – and thus as an ‘intentional effect’ produced by the synthesis of consciousness.”
Here, I concur fully with Philipse’s analysis of the Ding an sich in Husserl (1995, §XIII).
Infinite, because the Idea of the world—which is of an absolute Object “purified of all indeterminacy”—can never in principle be realized, since reality as revealed in and through time-consciousness is essentially open-ended. The following passage (Husserl, 2001b, 58 [20 − 1]) illustrates this idea strikingly: “In this way, an idea that lies in infinity belongs to every external perception, the idea of the completely determined object, of the object that would be determined through and through, known through and through, where every one of its determinations would be purified of all indeterminacy, and where the full determination itself would be devoid of any plus ultra with respect to what is still to be determined, what is still remaining open. I spoke of an idea lying in infinity, that is, of an unattainable idea. For, the essential structure of perception itself excludes a perception […] that would furnish absolute knowledge of the object; it excludes such a knowledge in which the tension would collapse between the object in the How of determination (which is changing and relative, remaining incomplete), and the object itself. For evidently, the possibility of a plus ultra is in principle never ruled out. It is thus the idea of the absolute self of the object and of its absolute and complete determination, of its absolute individual essence. In relation to this infinite idea which is to be seen, but which as such is not realizable, every perceptual object in the epistemic process is a flowing approximation. We always have the external object in the flesh (we see, grasp, seize it), and yet it is always at an infinite distance mentally.” This description makes patent the tension between the object as it is given “in the flesh”—the experienced object that comprises an inalienable horizon of indeterminacy—and the Idea of the object as it is grasped by the intellect, free of all indeterminacy, existing absolutely in itself, like a perfect self-identical sphere. The Idea of the world is but the logical extension of that of the Object—it is the Container of all Objects, the Sphere of all spheres. The key metaphysical insight of Husserl is that the latter is but an idealization, not the concrete, full-blooded reality. The indeterminacy perceived in objects and the world is not a mere accident of our limited perspectives on the world; it is an essential part of reality, which is intrinsically open-ended and flowing. This is why Husserl can assert that “absolute [i.e., fully determined] reality is no more or less valid than a round square” (2014, 102 [106]).
Note that the saying comes from Herbart, which Husserl acknowledges in his lectures on First Philosophy (2019, 251 [47]). But, in fact, Herbart writes in his Allgemeine Metaphysik (1829, 79): “So much appearance, so much indication of being (Wieviel Schein, soviel Hindeutung aufs Seyn).” The elision in Husserl’s reformulation is significant.
This is in itself an important point that has drastic metaphysical implications, but that would take us too far afield to be explored at length here. Suffice it to say that in the same lectures on time-consciousness, Husserl describes the origin of the flow of impressions, from which all “consciousness” and “being” derive, as unconditioned. The term used is “genesis spontanea” (Husserl, 1991, 106 [100]; see also § 31). See Blouin (2021, 81 − 8) and Henry (1990), for the full implications of this key claim in Husserl.
Importantly, this section was removed from the second edition of the LI, probably because it remained too indecisive on issues which the transcendental turn would settle. But the very indecision of Husserl on these questions at the time of the first edition of the LI, as we will see shortly, is itself significant.
It is in this sense, I think, that we should understand the notion of teleology in Husserl, and especially that of a universal teleology (see notably the striking text no 34, pp. 593-7, in Husserliana XV [Husserl, 1973]). “Teleology” here means the process by which experience develops its own latent potential, like the tree unfolding from the seed (except that from the transcendental viewpoint, all “external conditions” for the development of the seed, such as soil, sun, and rain, are all part of the seed).
It seems that many contemporary commentators continue to fail to notice the crucial importance of the distinction between empirical consciousness and transcendental consciousness in Husserl, thus leading them to reject a “strong” reading of the “transcendental insight,” which would imply “that the world I encounter is ‘but a construction thrown up,’ not just by consciousness, but by my consciousness” (Hopp, 2020, 247). But this rejection of the strong reading, and all objections of solipsism addressed at Husserl in general, miss the crucial point that “all distinctions as ‘I’ and ‘you,’ ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ first ‘constitute’ themselves in the absolute ego” (Husserl, 1970, 82 [84]). In my reading, the absolute ego (an unfortunate choice of term, no doubt) refers to the entire phenomenal stream or field of appearance in its full concretion, within which particular individuals and objects appear (see Husserl, 1997, 250 [288-9]). Hence, it is not Husserl’s own consciousness that constitutes the natural world, but transcendental consciousness that constitutes both the world and Husserl, along with every other empirical thing.
The present article is a substantially revised translation of a section of my book La phénoménologie comme manière de vivre (2021). I thank Zeta Books for allowing me to publish this material independently. I would also like to thank Guillaume St-Laurent and Maxime Doyon for their highly valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Blouin, P.S. Husserl’s Phenomenalism: A Rejoinder to the Philipse-Zahavi Debate. Husserl Stud 39, 241–261 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-023-09328-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-023-09328-6